Ray Lewis is a good football player, focused and strong, a good tackler and all that; however his athleticism does not excuse him for his embarrassing antics in celebrating himself, strutting like a comic book character, weeping at The Star-Spangled Banner and wearing Jesus on his sleeve. Like many before him, Ray Lewis has fallen victim to the cult of his own personality. Vainglorious, exhaustedly so, he has come to believe that he is more than he is, like many a pharaoh, dictator, queen and pop star before him.This could be amusing, but it’s not. Lewis is a severely flawed individual who needs the cameras off him. The father of six children by four women, worst of all, Lewis was involved in the stabbing deaths of two men 13 years ago, murders that remain ludicrously unsolved, murders for which Lewis has paid one family an undisclosed out-of-court settlement, murders that should haunt him for the rest of his life. Lewis is expected to stop playing football today, and hopefully it will be the last we are forced to endure his antics. To quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

I do my work-out in a room full of mirrors. My head bobs up and down over a small blank TV screen, up and down, and I look back at myself staring back, up and down, my face there and then not, and then another room behind that, like this one, but backwards, the back of my head behind that. It’s a pair of me, and another, another and another, the room warping off in a limitless arc, as if on a space station, or so I tell myself, in limbo. I am on this machine almost every day. It’s good for my lungs and heart and my mind. An hour every day. No sprints and hills for me. I cannot run. I ruined my knees years ago on my bike trip with Adam Davidson. We stopped at Zermatt for a day of skiing on the Matterhorn. I had never skied before, but it was July, and it was father’s favorite mountain. I was out of control – like the rest of the trip – and crashed again and again and eventually completely wiped out and tore up my knee. But I digress. I am on this elliptical machine every day with these mirrors, reflecting, thinking. That’s the point. That’s where I sort everything out. That’s where I thought about this.